10 Hard Rock Songs That Were Supposed To Be Classics (But Tanked)

After Vitalogy came out, it really felt like Pearl Jam could do anything they wanted to and still make kickass music. Coming off of the massive headache of the Ticketmaster lawsuit and getting even weirder on some of the therapeutic tracks like Bugs, everything on PJ's third outing was still a trip to listen to from back to front. It would seem that Eddie Vedder realized that too...and went the polar opposite direction on No Code.

Compared to the strange moments on Vitalogy, this record feels like if every avant garde experiment took place on every other song, with Vedder going on to describe the mindset of this record as being anticommercial. When taking in the record as a whole, Who You Are is probably the closest thing to a single as you can find, but not skimping out on the weirder moments.

By just having a prominent guitar hook to drag you along, a lot of this song feels tribal in its construction, almost like Vedder is trying to use his lyrics as some sort of spiritual meditation between him and the listener. As much as this could have saved things, the damage had already been done, with Vedder going one way and the mainstream going another. When looking through the back catalog of the grunge era though, this is still one hell of a trip that will leave you wondering where the rest of the album is headed.